A few of us, trying to stay war. Coldest trip I have been on. My thermometer quit at 20. Rick's quit at 5. The ranger at Badger pass was calling for a low of 0 to -2 for Friday, and I think we got that!

Another's Jacob D. shot combining my camera and his lens and skills, to capture the mood..

Great pics! Thanks for sharing! I'm thinking of doing that route soon. I have a few questions:

1. Was the terrain and snow pack such that snowshoes were adequate the entire time? (I'm trying to avoid hauling crampons and ice axe)2. Where's the best place to camp? I was told you can't camp on the actual Dewey point overlook.3. Any other tips?

What can I say? It was snowing and I was more interested in soup and tea. I admitted at the time that I felt like the little piggy that built his house of straw. Maybe if I had a willy warmer from New Zealand or a cat suit I would have been able to stay warm and put some more effort into it.

In spite of my terrible tent pitch I somehow managed to have a great time. It was great fun catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. What a great group! I look forward to seeing many of you at Coe in 2 weeks.

Hopefully others will answer your question as well.Obviously we had a variety of sleep systems and some were more comfortable overnight than others. I don't think anyone was truly miserable throughout the night.I sleep very cold to begin with so I brought plenty of insulation, what would be overkill for many. That said, I slept very well; comfortable and warm, other than having to cover my face and waking up with the humidity of my breath having turned to ice on the sleeping bag around my face.My system, from the ground up:

I wore some Goosefeet down pants, some Feathered Friends down booties and a Paragonia R 1 hoodie. On Friday night I also wore a Montbell Alpine Light Parka.I mostly wore a beanie I made with Quiviut wool.

I would have survived with a little less, but I am glad I had all that!

Thanks everybody for a great weekend even though it was a short one for me and my son. This was a great trip to meet old friends and meet some new ones. I wish I could have spent more time with Mike and his wife, they came in to camp late Sat. night after most of us were already in bed, for this I'm truley sorry, normaly I would have been out there helping them set up there shelter. I think that I was more worried about my cold feet and getting them warm, plus dealing with my 16 year old daughter at home kind of gets you off track, at least for this old man, boys are so much easier to raise. No excuses, I need to slow down and taste the snow, or is that smell the roses? Well here's to the next snow trip, and some more pictures.

I also had a nalgene filled with hot water in the sleeping bag. I was barely warm enough with all that and sleeping with all those layers wasn't very comfortable since they'd get tangled when I tossed and turned.

For me and my son's sleep system we had a Mountain Smith Morrison double wall 2 man tent, we left the fly hang down to keep more heat in.

I was in a Borahgear silnylon bivy with a 20* over stuff EE Tim Marshall quilt, and a syn. over quilt that I made out of Nobul 1, Ripstop nylon from Joanns and 2.5 Apex for insulation inbetween, on top of a Neoair, an emergency blanket that my son brought was under the Neoairs to reflect heat back to our bodies.

My son was using the other EE quilt that was a 0*, he had to strip off clothes in the middle of the night, he said he was uncomfortable and hot, that was untill the quilt became untucked from the pad, then he said he could feel cold drafts, his feet got a little cold also, but that was due to not shifting more down towards his feet.

To be fair though, when we went to bed, and after restling around with all the gear we generated a lot ou btu's, and the temp inside before we went to sleep was a balmy 48*,

Later that night I wanted to check the temps, and as I unzipped my bivy I noticed it was soaked, it was totaly wet between the syn over quilt that I had made and the bivy, but the down quilt was completely dry and warm next to my body, that proved one point I wanted to try out, and that was to see if the over quilt would soak up the condensation and still keep the down quilt dry, plus add a few more degrees to my sleep system for little weight gain, success! I never got cold at all, the final low temp in our tent was 21*, it may have got lower, but out of all the times I checked that was the lowest reading.

Overall I was impressed with my new over quilt and will make another one that weighs a little less to take on future winter trips, not so much for the added warmth, but more for the condensation barrier.

I also wore silk base layer top and bottoms under my Merino wool base layer top and bottoms. Then for my feet I wore merino wool socks inside my goose feet down booties and foot warmers on my socks and between the booties.

We did create a lot of condensation inside the tent being that there was two bodies exhaling all night, most of it froze to the tent, but a lot was inside our bivy's from keeping our heads tucked inside the quilts. I also was wearing one of Kats beanies, those things really work well.

Just a note...Weather.com had the low at Badger Pass at -17F on their "weather yesterday page" on Monday when we looked. Seriously. I don't know how cold it was at the point, but it's the same elevation.

Great to meet all of you; thank you for welcoming us late-in-the-dark-arrivals and letting us use the kitchen! :)

This link will expire, but it'll be good through the end of January...

http://www.weather.com/weather/monthly/29:11

And of note... it looks like what was previously -17 is now -20? Odd.

We passed some snowshoe people while we were coming out that thought Badger Pass was 8 at 7:30am. At any rate ... it was a cold cold night. :)

Adam, you posted that 'just be a model' photo of me, lol. I'm glad now it was too cold to deter me from going the nude model route that I normally insist on. :D

Mike it's possible that weather report is from the Mammoth weather station, which is probably the closest one to Badger Pass. It was well cold out there, but -20 doesn't sound right. Coldest I've been in was -15ºF and the gear I had wouldn't have kept me warm in that.

Great photos and trip reports everyone. It's quite interesting to see all the different setups and the similarities in gear choices as well. Jacob, sorry to hear about the memory card issues. I usually bring a spare card in case one goes bad or more likely I fill the original up. An extra memory card can't weight too much, right?

Eric, yeah I always bring an extra... in this case my 'extra' turned out to be the only one I had. Long story, but it was mostly filled up with images from my wife's Canon, which I had no way to delete unless I formatted the card, thus losing the photos I took on the first day.

Kat let me borrow her camera since I had a problem with my memory card.She was nice enough to let me take home the memory card from the GGG which still had the images on it. I shot several panoramas with it, and just stitched them together in photoshop. The largest of these is about 100 megapixels...